


Falling For It

by interstellar (perihadion)



Category: Smallville
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Divergence - Post-S7, F/M, Future Fic, POV First Person, POV Lois, Short, sudden fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-05
Updated: 2007-04-05
Packaged: 2020-10-26 21:43:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20749238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perihadion/pseuds/interstellar
Summary: Lois muses on the nature of smoke and mirrors. (I wrote this for Smallville in 2007 but it fits better into general Superman lore now.)





	Falling For It

Am I stupid? Could I ask a more subjective question? Academics, those people who drink and philosophise their way to a degree in a subject they have to explain to you, repeat the mantra that intelligence is not qualifications, is something that we are all possessed of. That is their idea of a revolution: spitting on dictionaries so that plebs like me may feel brilliant for remembering the names of state capitals.

Kansas state capital is Topeka: I remember that one. But for me, it will always be Smallville. So, was I blind? He was the one wearing the glasses. It’s funny, though – you go back there and no one has realised. He could probably walk into the Talon despectacled, even wearing that stupid blue T and red jacket combo he used to run around in and – well, they’d see something. Someone would turn to him and say, “You know, it’s funny – you look so much like …”

So much like Jonathan, his old man. People see what they want to see – I know I did. And the way they construct these worldviews: they’ll dismiss what they read in _The Inquisitor_, fully evidenced or not, if it’s convenient to them – thanks to its rep. But I reckon they’d believe much taller tales intimated over a friendly beer, especially if these things bring them comfort, or fit into the construct of the way they want the world to be.

And yes, I wanted him to be that loser farm boy I could hold at arm’s length and pretend wasn’t “good enough”: Smallville, an insult turned term of endearment. Because, did he really have to be an alien? It was bad enough that I was already half in love with the guy; if I had joked about us being “worlds apart”, I couldn’t cope with the idea that it may literally be true.

So the weird occurrences, the disappearances, his infuriating good luck: all coincidence. If he looked nobler in that light, if his irises looked a little bluer, that was it: just a trick of the light, tired eyes, and “Maybe I should look into getting a pair of those”. But I never plucked the glasses from the end of his nose to model and ask “So, what do you think?” because they were the smokescreen I couldn’t fan away: the scales on my eyes, and I was deathly afraid of what I might see if I removed them.

If it disappointed him, he mostly hid it. Once or twice I thought I saw a shadow of it flicker across his face, but it was always gone as soon as I looked back. He knows exactly how his disguise works: when he finally blew the smoke away and after all the dust settled he told me. Thanks to me he saw that if he gave people the opportunity to deny the truth they would clutch it in a steely grip: people don’t want to know that Superman has thoughts and feelings like our own, a life that he sacrifices to protect us; and, his friends don’t want to cope with the idea that he may be the most powerful being on Earth. So, I was the inspiration, but I think perversely he hoped I might also prove the exception.

It wasn’t all selfishness on my part. The part of me that, peering through the smog, saw a shadow of the truth wanted the choice to be his. The litmus test: did he even want me to know? If I peeled the scales from my own eyes, I could never unsee what I had seen; I could never go back to let him make the decision himself, and the knowledge would be like ashes in my mouth. No, for the first time in my life I had a lead I was unwilling to chase up, and I would gladly debase myself in his eyes for the assurance that if I ever knew the truth, it was because he wanted me to.

There was always going to be fallout. When he finally pulled off the glasses, reached across and gently removed the scales from my eyes so that I could deny it no longer, I wondered some terrible things. It took time for me to adjust, to rationalise. Considering what I know about who he is, I realised that, knowing he could, he never would go back to Smallville without his glasses. He is not a show-off, he just does what he has to do, and eventually I finally realised that he hadn’t been laughing at me all these years. But, for a moment I did doubt whether I knew him at all.

But time: what do we have but time now in which to work this all out? And when the smoke finally does clear, you see the world afresh in a million colours; and in the sky, the Sun, burning above it all, both beautiful and dangerous.

Was I blind? He was the one wearing the glasses.

**Author's Note:**

> I enjoy the fact that I wrote the line 'But I never plucked the glasses from the end of his nose to model and ask “So, what do you think?”' two years before Lois did exactly that in 9x08 "Idol".
> 
> Come say hi on [twitter](http://twitter.com/theoceanblooms) or [tumblr](http://spectroscopes.tumblr.com)! If you really liked this fic, it would be lovely if you could [reblog](https://www.tumblr.com/reblog/190744781939/8XsfkiYa) on tumblr.


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